If a super-editor has to ask such questions then I think <CG> needs better auditing logs and tools.

Best guess is the game comes from Meyer's column in the <Gentleman's Journal>. I know I've seen games by M. Marks there.

Just to repeat and rephrase - I'm saying that <CG> needs better auditing tools. In fact, I think everybody should be able to see the change logs, not just super-editors.

You know <Suzz> hardly listens to me! Besides, shouldn't this also be a "consensus" request?

<And I was pointing out that if <Missy> looked he could figure it out. It's not a complicated mystery.>

I was thinking about this last night. Are you implying that there's some measure of deductive logic needed?

If so, then my "petition" remains - knowing who changed game data, and when, shouldn't involve any detective work beyond looking at a logfile.

Here's your huckleberry!

https://www.kwabc.org/en/newsitem/g...

* * * * *

I was going to question <jn>'s guess of <The Gentleman's Journal> as the only samples of his column I could find on Google Books only had chess problems, and no games.

But Lange's article cites the game source(s):

<Games 24 to 27 in Gentleman´s Journal IV, p.218.>

https://www.kwabc.org/en/newsitem/g...

There is an edit history for each player's bio page which also captures when things like countries of origin and affiliation as well as dates of birth/death get updated.

Super-editors (SE) don't have access to all the logs, including the correction slip logs (and as far as I know correction slips are the only avenue SEs have to change a player's short/long names).

But knowing who the four active SEs are and checking the biography edit history, one can reasonably deduce who the SE was who made the change but there is no guarantee that one SE hadn't changed the name and another SE updated the country of origin later.

But (ack!), is there a change log file kept for individual games?

E.g. <gid> mapping to info like creator/creation date and then subsequent changes to PGN header tags, or movelists?

It sounds like you're going through the player pages to see that a game got dropped.

Or, I guess, in this case, a new player created.

But then there would be no log for a game being reassigned to a player that already existed in the db, right?

The game data fields that can be changed by Volunteer Editors (VE) get logged as "Editor Notes" and are viewable by VEs and SEs.

There is a "stream" of logged data that is viewable under "Edits" (players) and "Notes" (games) viewable in the Bistro.

For this historically fraudulent games that are well established in the "canon", I've recommended having two versions of the game in the DB.

The accurate version, like the game here presumably is (though it ain't really, without a right proper Source tag).

And the illegitimate version, with the famous errors intact, so users can find it. Of course they'll be a large neon sign, complete with a chorus line of dancers, alerting users to the improprieties of the game.

Along with all the proper links to the correct game, and various Winter articles (or, as the case may be, kwabc.org articles).

In other words, long live Marx (the fraudster)!

Perhaps I can cloud the issue even further. I've got three games played by <E. Marks> against Mephisto, including the two games published in the <North Metropolitan and Holloway Press> (aka the "Holloway Press"), 1879.05.17, p5, which states <Two games played in January, 1878, between "Mephisto" and the Secretary of the Royal Aquarium, "Mephisto" giving the odds of the Queen's Knight.> The third game comes from a <Land and Water> column in a White Collection scrapbook (column dated 1878.11.30) and then there is <E. Marks> playing against Zukertort at the Athenæum Chess Club published in the <British Chess Magazine>, v5 n6, June 1885, pp210-211.

Which begs the question of there being two <Marks>, an "E." and "M." both being members of the Athenæum Chess Club.

E. Marks is identified as "Edward Marks" in the <North Metropolitan and Holloway Press>, 1878.11.16, p6.